New corporators in BMC skip important meetings

In the last one year, many new corporators across all parties skipped general body, ward committee and other statutory meetings of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). They say that they did not find much productive these meetings.

A proposal was submitted during the general body meeting of BMC held last week and it was found that many new corporators failed to raise common people issues in the House. Parag Shah from Bhartiya Janta party, Archana Bhalerao from Shiv Sena and Geeta Gawli from Akhil Bhartiya Sena had poor attendance in the monthly general body meeting. They echoed that the meeting does not start in time and they got their wasted while waiting in the BMC headquarter. They say that they can utilise their in other productive works like solving issues in their respective areas.

Parag Shah, one of the richest candidate croporator from BJP attended only 33 meetings out of 97 general body meeting in the last one year. He says that instead of waiting to start meeting in BMC, he preferred to spend time in his area.

However, senior party leaders preferred to attend maximum number of meetings. Ravi Raja, Congress corporator and leader of opposition attended 96 meetings of the total 97 meetings held between April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018 while leader of House, Yashwant Jadhav who is nos chairman in the standing committee missed seven meetings during this period.

The monthly general body usually are held two-four times in a month as per the need and necessity and all 227 members of the corporation are expected to attend and raise issues of their areas. The general body is the highest decision making body in the BMC to decide upon sanctioning of major administrative policies including the annual budget and even the Development Plan. However, new corporators preferred to skip it.

But, there are corporators who attended all the meetings. Some of them are Suhas Vadkar and Datta Pongde from Shiv Sena, Jitendra Patil from BJP and former standing committee chairman Ramesh Korgaonkar from Shiv Sena have a 100 percent attendance on record.